thank you, mr. chairman. myra, with myra, by the way is her superintendent ernie >> thank you and we appreciate her being recognized. this was a violent crime. and she was instrumental in helping the young lady and it's nice to know that other young ladis that may feel in that same predicament know there are people out there willing to help them and we're proud to

have her at green division and she is a great person. thank you. >> good afternoon. thank you for recognizing me for doing this. this is something that i do on a daily basis. if i see anyone in trouble or what have you, i'm helping them. whether it constitutes me calling central control or not, i'm helping them. it's just nice to be recognized for something that i do on a daily basis.

thank you. >> thank you on behalf of the board and the entire agency for your outstanding service. we really appreciate it. [ applause ] >> this is angela johnson. >> good afternoon miss johnson and congratulations and thank you for your great service to the agency and the people of this city. thank you, thank you. i would just like to say that i am just honored to be receiving this award. it caught me by surprise, and honestly, it brought me to tears because i just honestly felt that in the event that somebody saw something happening to me that they would call and try to get help for me. and being that this man was being assaulted and just so brutally, it was just hurtful for me to just watch it as it unfolded. you know, as it began, and i drive the 37 line and i have regular amount of we set to

accomplish three gonzales. one, to right side the service while minmizing inconveniences for our customers. two, to reduce overtime and three, reduce fuel and maintenance costs through operating fewer miles. we were encouraged by the results. we were able to provide 97.5% of service during that week. that represents a 3% increase from the same time period the previous year. we reduced operating time by $20,000 overall. we reduced mileage on our bus

fleet by 10,000 miles per day. this results in maintenance and fuel savings of $51,000 per day or more than $2',000 in total maintenance. in total we arable to save approximately $275,000 during this period. going forward, we will continue to look at key holidays to provide the best service possible with both our riders and taxpayers in mind. also as you know, on december 28th we provided free service on muni vehicles to our customers in honor of the sfmta's 100 anniversary and on december 31 as well for the traditional free new year's eve service. both campaigns were promoted extensively by a multi lingual, multi media advertising that included print advertising and 17 newspapers, muni bus

exteriors, website banners and information and press releases. banners and kiosks in muni metro stations. additionally we ran over 650 30-second tv commercials on comcast tv, featuring the mayor and director reiskin promoting new year's eve ride free. this year's promotion got a boost from our friends at phillip yips 66, who underwrote the campaign with their sponsorship we were able to acquire additional advertising in the form of multi-lingual spots and traffic reports and led signage on the approaches to the bay bridge from december 26th through new year's eve. a centennial video produced by sfgovtv and the agencies's marketing department will be shown to the board on its january 29th workshop. looking forward to that.

the agency has also developed various promotional items to be distributed to employees this month that include commemorative pins, centennial shoulder.s and coffee mugs. lastly on december 28th, members of the mta board and director reiskin visited many operating administrative divisions to personally thank our frontline employees for their dedicated service. staff really appreciated hearing from you and a special thanks to director lee's wife for the fabulous cupcakes. a short update on the court of appeals ruling on our bike program that was released yesterday. as you know in 2009, the mta board approved the san francisco bike plan. the adequacy of the environmental impact report supporting this approval was challenged in an appeal to the board of supervisors and an

action in superior court. in 2010, the san francisco superior court ruled in the city's favor. the challengers appealed this ruling to the california court of appeals. just the california court of appeals issued a decision upholding the trial court's conclusion that the eir was adequate in all respects. the court also identified some minor technical problems with the approval process. the city attorney's office is evaluating those issues. we expect they can be resolved soon and without disruption to the sfmta's bicycle program. >> mr. yee, before you go on, i have been advised by the city attorney, this is something that we can't discuss today because it's not agendized. so we could at the next meeting in february, is that right? thank you go ahead, mr. yee? >> instructor: would like to introduce a couple of new senior staff, which you have

personally be able to greet a few minutes earlier. i'm pleased to introduce alicia baptiste to the sfmta's new chief of staff. in this position, she will work closely with ed in the management of the agency's day-to-day affairs and assume key responsibilities for ensuring interagency coordination, ensuring that we are working together effectively, as well as with our external partners. in addition to these tasks she will oversee stragic plan implementation, as well as other strategic initiatives. she began her career with the city by working for the sfmta in mr. mike burn's administration and now she returns, coming full circle, back to us after many years with the san francisco planning department where she served in a variety of administrative functions, most recently as the department's chief of staff.

i would like it also to introduce another new member of the management team, who is returning home. a native san franciscan, who joined the sfmta family as communications director january 3rd. she is responsible strategic communications, media relations and marketing to help ensuring cohesive awareness and understanding of sfmta's role, services and commitment to serving the public and other key stakeholders. internal and external communications, community relationships and outreach, traditional and digital media will report to you. miss su comes to us from pfizer in new york city where she served as director of branded marketing and communications. i don't know what it is, but it

sounds complicated. prior to pfizer she worked at warner lambert and chase manhattan bank in various management positions. thank you on behalf of all of my colleagues and welcome on board. >> congratulations and welcome, miss su. >> thank you. well, mr. chairman and members of the board, it's wonderful to have the opportunity to return to the city of my birth. san francisco. after 25 years of being away on the east coast. and i am truly honored to have this opportunity to return and serve the people of san francisco by serving in the role of communications director at sfmta. so i'm looking forward to working with you and the sfmta staff and the people of this great city to ensure

that we have great and wonderful choices available to all people here. >> thank yous miss su and welcome. glad you are here. miss jean baptiste. >> good afternoon chairman and members of the board. i also am really honored to be part of the team here. i was just thrilled to be returning to the mta. when i was here ten years ago, it was a smaller organization, still very large, but a larger organization. what i have been struck by in last month that i have been back is the sheer breadth and scope of the work that we do and the services that we deliver on a day to day basis is very impressive. i have also been very impressed with the talent and quality of the staff at the agency and the level of the commitment that people show to achieving our goals and look forward to working with all of you. >> thank you. mr. yee, saving the best for

last, the peninsula corridor joint power boards that owns and operates caltrains unanimously elected our beloved chairman tom nolan as their vice-chair. many of you may not know that chairman nolan was the founding chairman of the joint powers board and was instrumental in the acquisition of caltrain. >> thank you very much. i like to win an election every week. i'm not sure what is out there next week. must be something. [ laughter ] >> thank you. the train is just such an important part of the entire peninsula, and it's growing in popularity all the time. over 50,000 people a day are riding it now. when we first started there were about 16,000 and it was just hanging by a thread. it's doing extremely well and the hope is to take it to downtown san francisco and

electrification is underway. i would like to get back to one thing you said, mr. yee, i think almost had an opportunity on december 28th to go to the divisions. and i went to woods and i know others went different places. i learned some things and there were some questions and i think at some point, another meeting or another retreat after that, miss boomer, if members have things that they learned or questions, to bring it back to this body. to me it was a very rewarding several hours' experience with the various parts of the division. with members' consent -- i know you went to the cable car barn with your kids. >> i did. i had the pleasure of waking up on muni's birthday very early in the morning and there is not much that will get my kids out of bed oearly on a holiday, but the promise of the cable car did it and i will give a special thanks to them. they were wonderful hosts.

i did learn a lot, particularly about the double-boarding. i have sent thank you notes and my kids have as well. i will point out that they were wonderful hosts to two relatively young children and it was a lot of fun. also coming outstanding of the director's report i'm focused on the workshop and i think we picked up a fair number of ideas that we want to explore. and beyond what i learned on the visits i will say as i have said before, as we approach this workshop, to me in addition to ways to sort of expedite the metro service, which i know we'll be talking about later on in today's agendas, i think it's time to revisit the idea of closing market street to all, but transit, bicycle and pedestrian. as i said in our last meeting, discussing taxis and now that we have revamped the medallion issuance system, i would urge

you to set the agenda to devote a significant amount of time to discussing taxi service. i they it's same time for significant reform in dispatch and peak time performance and now is the time to address that. >> anybody want to comment? >> yes, thank you, chairman nolan. i also wanted to express my sincere gratitude to the staff that welcomed me into the -- cameron beach yard and the balboa yard or the station there and also got a chance to get over to potrero. we can talk about a whole lot more things that i'm eager to talk about on the 29th, but i wanted to express my gratitude particularly to supervisors there, michael henry at the balboa facility -- or potrero, i'm sorry. potrero was most receptive and

francisco tapia and her staff, everybody was so welcoming there. i too was up before the sun and did my best to -- i thought i was going to be there to steal the show with some doughnuts, but i guess i was upstaged by cupcakes. so i will try better next year. [ laughter ] >> thank you, mr. yee, members of public, comments on the director's report? okay. good afternoon >> good afternoon directors. i would like to congratulate muni for offering free rides on new year's eve. like many of your policies, that was a very open-handed thing to do in our own much smaller way luxor cab also contributed to free rides that evening. at a time when other transportation services were

doubling or tripling or quadrupleling their rates. offering free and safe and sober rides to reduce the incidents of drunk-driving. unfortunately only a few dozen people actually took advantage of that service, the free rides that evening. and we certainly look forward to expanding it in the future. and we'll do so next time on st. patty's day. >> how busy was your dispatch line? >> we were utterlying overwhelmed for almost the entire evening. >> thank you. next item. >> moving on item 8 is the citizens' advisory committee report. [ inaudible ] >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon.

i am substituting today for dan murphy, who has been ill for a while and we thought we better get these recommendations to you as quickly as we could. i am presenting recommendations. we came up with at our october and december meetings of last year. the first two concern church street and transit improvements there. the mta cac recommends that both the church street transit-only lane and the 76x marin express pilot projects proceed as presented. the cac requests that staff report back to the mta cac quarterly on their findings and at the end of the pilot project. cac recommends that the tep staff use other appropriate

tools on the church street project including transit preferential significants and recommends that the agency take into account all modes flowing through the dubois/church intersection whether or not through signage or signals. the next recommendation, cac recommends that the agency report back on the possibility of selecting a low-income community as a destination for a second run of the 76x marin headlands express. the next motion has to do with the tep again. cac recommends that a higher ridership line be chosen for the next tep pilot project.

this next motion those do with sidewalk parking and infringement by parked cars on the sidewalk. the mta cac recommends that sidewalk parking laws be enforced not just against cars that leave less than 4' of travel room for pedestrians, but for any car being more than 1' into the sidewalk. the next long motion concerns operator training. cac recommends that the agency expand its operator training capacity in order to meet the long-term operator needs of the agency. even to the understood short-term detriment to service that might result from shifting personnel from operator to

trainer positions. the cac recommends the agency make adoption of polices and systems to decrease trainee washout rates a higher priority. the cac recommends the agency investigate whether simulator training would be cost-effective and whether purchasing simulator equipment in conjunction with other transit agencies in the region would make sense? cac recommends that operators receive more hands-on training in boarding and deboarding disabled passengers using actual disabled passengers. the final motion from our october meeting concerns graffiti removal. cac recommends that graffiti in muni tunnels and property be removed within 72 hours of being reported. the same standard applied to property owners throughout the

city. finally at our december meet ing we passed two motions. the mta cac recommend that the sfmta use existing street-level platforms to board able-bodied passengers and use the central platform exclusively for people with disabilities for boarding at the end of special events at the ballpark. the last motion today is concerning recreation and park department special events. the mta cac recommends that the rec and park department collect a transit fee for special permitted events to defray the cost of providing additional

transportation service before and particularly after those events. i am happy to answer any questions, if you have any. >> thank you. we appreciate the always thoughtful recommendations from the cac and i can assure you that the staff will give them their full attention very shortly. >> thank you. >> give our best to mr. murphy. >> this is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board for items not on today's agenda. i have received two speaker cards. [ reading speakers' names ] >> good afternoon miss hale. >> good afternoon and happy new year. i'm vera hale and i'm a member of the advisory council to the department of aging and adult

services. and some of us became very concerned when we read that you were considering at some point eliminating age-based discounts. now we think the senior discount is very important and should be larger, but one of the things that we need to keep in mind is that if you do eliminate it, it would be a disaster for seniors. seniors, there are 155,000 seniors in san francisco. that is 19.2% of the population. and it's growing. as you know, baby-boomers are increasing. the older americans act considers people who are 60 to be seniors. and there are 44 nutrition sites in the city and about 2,000 people go everyday -- not everyday, but go to these 44 sites and most of them go on

muni and sometimes they go on one, two or three buses. to start segregating people when they are not segregated at meal sites based on their income would create big problems. people have developed social relations, in a time when few social relations are there for older people. and to tear those up by saying, no you can't, then that makes it very hard. also 61% of san franciscans do not have enough money to live here. i would like to give you a copy of the elder economic security index and some of what i have said to look at, and see what it takes to live in san francisco. they estimate it takes $27,000 and 61% of our population do not meet that. >> thank you, miss hale, appreciate that. >> we hope you will not

consider that. >> thank you. >> good afternoon again directors charles rathborn on behalf of luxor cab. i would like to submit our complaint against uber. uber is installing their own dispatch equipment in our cabs without our permission. the equipment consists of a smartphone modified to acts a dispatch terminal. the terminal serves only uber's customers and not the general public. you cannot for instance order a cab using uber's equipment.

but the unlicensed dispatch firms do not. unlicensed companies undermine our ability to respond to service requests through our own already strained dispatch service to the extent that our drivers are working with the unlicensed dispatch, they are unavailable to respond to service requests made through our own licensed dispatch. is the operation safe? does the device cause more driver distraction than already exists of a complex work environment of a taxi cab? what about the fare? we know that uber always charges more than the meters fare. however, their transactions are totally invisible to us.

i am running out of time, so i will just say you should not turn a blind eye to these services. they undermine our services and we ask you to adopt emergency regulations to prohibit that kind of activity. >> thank you. >> can i ask a question? >> sorry to turn this into school day for you charles. are you suggesting to us that luxor cabs are responding to uber calls? so a luxor cab dealing with flagged calls or dispatched calls? >> yes. >> so they might get uber or

luxor? you don't have the ability to control your drivers to tell them they can't do that? >> that is a good question, director. >> we probably shouldn't be discussing that. to miss hale, when director reiskin was speaking about ideas, i think while we certainly heard everything that miss hale said, i wouldn't want anybody watching this to get the wrong idea of what has been proposed. >> thank you. anybody else? >> no other person who submitted a speaker card. >> okay to the consent calendar. >> item 10 is the consent calendar. items are considered to be routine by the board and will be voted on as a single block, unless a member of public or a member of the board severes an item for separate discussion and action.